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Leadership Traits

“Successful leaders share three abilities. The first is the ability to get along with others and build teams. Another is the ability to make sound and timely decisions. And the third is the ability to get things done. Unfortunately, only a relatively small percentage of leaders possess all three of these attributes.”

~ Gordy Curphy, Curphy Consulting Corporation

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Great Man Theory

• The Great Man Theory attempted to prove that leaders and followers are fundamentally different.

• Conclusions of the research:– Leaders were not qualitatively different than

followers.– Intelligence, initiative, stress tolerance,

responsibility, friendliness, and dominance, were moderately related to leadership success.

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TRAIT APPROACHTRAIT APPROACHTRAIT: A distinguishing

characteristic or quality, especially of

one's personal nature. Trait approach focuses

on leader not the follower or the

situation.

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Traits and Leadership

• Trait approach: Traits refer to frequent regularities or trends

in a person’s behavior. – Theory maintains that people

behave the way they do because of the strengths of

the traits they possess.

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Personality Traits and Leadership (continued)

• Personality traits are useful for explaining why people act fairly consistently in different situations.

• Knowing differences in personality traits can help predict more accurately how people will tend to act in different situations.

• Leader behavior reflects an interaction between personality traits and various situational factors:– Weak situations– Strong situations

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Traits and Situation

• The results showed that the average individual in the leadership role is different from an average group member. An individual does not become a leader solely because that individual possesses certain traits. Rather, the traits that leaders possess must be relevant to situations in which the leader is functioning. As stated earlier, leaders in one situation may not necessarily be leaders in another situation.

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10 Basic Characteristics 1. drive for responsibility and task completion; 2. strength and persistence in pursuit of goals; 3. risk taking and originality in problem solving; 4. drive to exercise initiative in social situations; 5. self-confidence and sense of personal identity; 6. willingness to accept consequences of decision and action; 7. readiness to absorb interpersonal stress; 8. willingness to tolerate frustration and delay; 9. ability to influence other people’s behavior; and 10. capacity to structure social interaction systems to the purpose at hand.

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INTELLIGENCE• Leaders tend to have higher intelligence

than non-leaders. Having strong verbal ability, perceptual ability, and reasoning appears to make one a better leader. However, a leader’s intellectual ability should not differ too much from that of the subordinates. If the leader’s IQ is very different from that of the followers, it can have a counterproductive impact on leadership. Leaders with higher abilities may have difficulty communicating with followers because they are preoccupied or because their ideas are too advanced for their followers to accept

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SELF CONFIDENCE

Self-confidence is the ability to be certain about one’s competencies and skills. It includes a sense of self-esteem and self-assurance and the belief that one can make a difference. Leadership involves influencing others, and self-confidence allows the leader to feel assured that his or her attempts to influence others are appropriate and right.

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DETERMINATION

Determination (strength) is the desire to get the job done and includes characteristics such as creativity, persistence, dominance, and drive. People with determination are willing to assert themselves, are proactive, and have the capacity to persevere in the face of difficulties. Being determined includes showing dominance at times and in situations where followers need to be directed.

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INTEGRITY

Integrity is the quality of honesty and trustworthiness. People who sense to

a strong set of principles and take responsibility for their actions are exhibiting integrity. Leaders with

integrity inspire confidence in others because they can be trusted to do

what they say they are going to do. They are loyal, dependable, and not deceptive. Basically, integrity makes

a leader believable and worthy of our trust

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Five Factor Personality Model and Leadership

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EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCEAs the two words suggest, emotional intelligence has to do with our emotions and thinking , and the interplay between the two. Whereas intelligence is concerned with our ability to learn information and apply it to life tasks, emotional intelligence is concerned with our ability to understand emotions and apply this understanding to life’s tasks. Specifically, emotional intelligence can be defined as the ability to perceive and express emotions, to use emotions to facilitate thinking, to understand and reason with emotions, and to effectively manage emotions within oneself and in relationships with others

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Choosing a new «Director of Research»

The Question:

Sandra Coke is vice president for research and development at Great Lakes Foods (GLF), a large snack food company that has approximately 1,000 employees. As a result of a recent reorganization, Sandra must choose the new director of research. The director will report directly to Sandra and will be responsible for developing and testing new products. The research division of GLF employs about 200 people. The choice of directors is important because Sandra is receiving pressure from the president and board of GLF to improve the company’s overall growth and productivity.

Sandra has identified three candidates for the position. Each candidate is at the same managerial level. She is having difficulty choosing one of them because each has very strong credentials.

The challenge confronting Sandra is to choose the best person for the newly established director’s position. Because of the pressure she feels from upper management, Sandra knows she must select the best leader for the new position.

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Alexa SmithAlexa Smith is a longtime employee of GLF who started part-time in the mailroom while in high school. After finishing school, Alexa worked in as many as 10 different positions throughout the company to become manager of new product marketing. Performance reviews of Alexa’s work have repeatedly described her as being very creative and insightful. In her tenure at GLF, Alexa has developed and brought to market four new product lines. Alexa is also known throughout GLF as being very persistent about her work: When she starts a project, she stays with it until it is finished. It is probably this quality that accounts for the success of each of the four new products with which she has been involved.

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Kelsey MettsA second candidate for the new position is Kelsey Metts, who has been with GLF for 5 years and is manager of quality control for established products. Kelsey has a reputation of being very bright. Before joining GLF, she received her MBA at Harvard, graduating at the top of her class. People talk about Kelsey as the kind of person who will be president of her own company someday. Kelsey is also very personable. On all her performance reviews, she received extra-high scores on sociability and human relations. There isn’t a supervisor in the company who doesn’t have positive things to say about how comfortable it is to work with Kelsey. Since joining GLF, Kelsey has been instrumental in bringing two new product lines to market.

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Thomas SantiagoThomas Santiago, the third candidate, has been with GLF for 10 years and is often consulted by upper management regarding strategic planning and corporate direction setting. Thomas has been very involved in establishing the vision for GLF and is a company person all the way. He believes in the values of GLF, and actively promotes its mission. The two qualities that stand out above the rest in Thomas’s performance reviews are his honesty and integrity. Employees who have worked under his supervision consistently report that they feel they can trust Thomas to be fair and consistent. Thomas is highly respected at GLF. In his tenure at the company, Thomas has been involved in some capacity with the development of three new product lines.

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Questions

1. Based on the information provided about the trait approach, if you were Sandra, who would you select?

2. In what ways is the trait approach helpful in this type of selection?

3. In what ways are the weaknesses of the trait approach highlighted in this case?

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Skills Approach

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Skills Model

• The model is characterized as a ability model because it examines the relationship between a leader’s knowledge and skills (i.e., capabilities) and the leader’s performance. Rather than emphasizing what leaders do, the skills approach frames leadership as the capabilities (knowledge and skills) that make effective leadership possible .

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If you have time please watch…

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoI7ou_SpwA